In order to prepare for your Prescribing Safety Assessment exam, it’s important that you familiarise yourself with each of the 8 sections of the exam, so you know what’s expected of you and where you might find the most marks. Some sections are weighted more heavily than others, and some have a different number of question items than others.
How PSA Exam Questions Are Marked
There are 200 marks available in total, broken down across the 8 sections of the PSA as follows:
- Section 1: Prescribing (PWS) is worth 80 marks (8 question items worth 10 marks each)
- Section 2: Prescription Review (REV) is worth 32 marks (8 question items worth 4 marks each)
- Section 3: Planning Management (MAN) is worth 16 marks (8 question items worth 2 marks each)
- Section 4: Providing Information (COM) is worth 12 marks (6 question items worth 2 marks each)
- Section 5: Calculation Skills (CAL) is worth 16 marks (8 question items worth 2 marks each)
- Section 6: Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) is worth 16 marks (8 question items worth 2 marks each)
- Section 7: Drug Monitoring (TDM) is worth 16 marks (8 question items worth 2 marks each)
- Section 8: Data Interpretation (DAT) is worth 12 marks (6 question items worth 2 marks each)
What’s Being Tested?
Each section of the Prescribing Safety Assessment is designed to test a different area of prescribing. In a nutshell, that means:
Section 1: Prescribing (PWS) tests your ability to write a safe and effective prescription, to manage acute medical emergencies, and to plan appropriate drug therapy for common indications. For each question item, you’ll be given a clinical scenario followed by a request to prescribe a single appropriate medicine or intravenous fluid, using one of a variety of prescription forms.
Section 2: Prescription Review (REV) tests your ability to review the prescribing of others, to spot potentially important errors and to make changes that will improve patient outcomes. In this section, you’ll be given scenarios that require you to review a current list of prescribed medicines (such as an inpatient prescription chart or a referral letter from a GP). You’ll have 6-10 medicines to review for each question item.
Section 3: Planning Management (MAN) tests your ability to plan appropriate treatment for common clinical indications. For each question item, you’ll be given a clinical scenario followed by a request to identify the most important treatment (from a list of 5) to manage that particular patient. You’ll need to select between a range of options, some of which would help, some of which would harm, and some of which would do nothing.
Section 4: Providing Information (COM) tests your ability to provide patients with important information about their medicines. In this section, you’ll be given scenarios in which a patient is about to start taking a new treatment or where further advice about an existing treatment is required. You’ll need to choose the most important piece of information from a list of 5 (where 4 are distractors).
Section 5: Calculation Skills (CAL) tests your ability to calculate appropriate drug doses and record the outcome accurately. These questions allow the use of a simple calculator to work out your answer – there is one built into the interface itself but you can also use your own.
Section 6: Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) tests your ability to detect, respond to and prevent potential adverse drug reactions. For each question item, you’ll need to choose the most appropriate answer from a list of 5.
Section 7: Drug Monitoring (TDM) tests your knowledge of how drugs work and their clinical effects, and your ability to monitor them appropriately to maximise safety and efficacy. In this section, you’ll be given scenarios that require you to make a judgement about how best to assess the impact of treatments that are ongoing or are being planned. For each question item, you’ll need to choose the most appropriate answer from a list of 5.
Section 8: Data Interpretation (DAT) tests your ability to interpret data on the impact of drug therapy and make appropriate changes, as well as critically appraising the results of relevant diagnostic, prognostic and treatment trials. For each question item in this section, you’ll need to interpret data in light of a clinical scenario and decide on the most appropriate course of action with regard to prescribing, choosing the most appropriate answer from a list of 5.
PSA Scoring and Question Items Explained By The Experts
For a more detailed outline of what’s in the PSA exam, how it’s scored, and what you need to understand in order to succeed, we recommend watching PSA Prep, a set of 9 (totally free) eLearning sessions we’ve created for exam candidates, working with a team of experts.
As well as an overview session, there’s a dedicated PSA Prep session for each of the 8 sections of the exam, providing you with more details and addressing some of the biggest challenges faced by PSA candidates.
For instant access, simply create (or log in to) your BPS Assessment portal account and scroll down to ‘PSA Prep’.